The Greens' burning problem

More recently, some critics of broadscale fuel reduction burning have tried to dismiss its worth by pointing to continuing housing and property losses during severe bushfires. This is somewhat of a ‘straw man’ argument because those who have pioneered, practiced, studied and refined fuel reduction burning have never claimed that it prevents damaging bushfires, only that it if sufficient fuel reduction is done it reduces their impacts.

This view is backed by a wealth of practical experience and observation, as well as more recent retrospective modelling of past bushfire events under various hypothetical fuel conditions. It is also a concept which is readily appreciated by rural Australians who would overwhelmingly prefer to live near fuel-reduced local forests rather than areas that haven’t burnt for decades.

Unfortunately for the Australian Greens, their motivations, intentions, and attitudes will always be judged primarily on the basis of the highly visible campaigning of their ENGO associates pursuing environmental ideologies, or on the real socio-economic impacts of environmental policies that have already been introduced at their behest. 

Accordingly, it is not hard for rural Australians to see through disenguous Greens’ claims that they support better bushfire outcomes while their ENGO associates are busily trying to discredit fuel reduction burning.  Furthermore, rural communities living with the social damage wrought by Greens-inspired ENGO campaigns against natural resource uses, are all-too-aware of how this directly and indirectly impacts on the capability to tackle bushfires. Quite simply, without rural employment it’s pretty hard to find volunteers to man local fire tankers.